NEWS

Several months ago, I had an unnamed member of the iBC board monitor many of you, especially those participating in the Blogger Network (@ibc_bn). Since the redesign of iBC, I’ve ceded control of the content of this site to you, the people, to do as you like. Between news (@ibc_fn) and blogger network posts, myself and the think tank/legendary tabbed blogger apparatus has been relegated to a very minor role in this blogging experiment.

During the annual iBC dinner, this topic, AND MORE, was broached. Unanimously, the board of directors of iBankCoin despises all of you, begging me to “take action quickly” and send you to the “cellars”, cordoned off from the rest of society. However, as ally and dear friend, I defended you, suggesting “give them another chance because things will get better.”

The gentlemen of iBC left the annual dinner with half smoked pipes and heads filled with anger, steaming from the state of affairs at iBankCoin.

This afternoon, news arrived at my desk, a full report, detailed and comprehensive, from that unnamed board member who was tasked with monitoring you. It is a very bleak read, indeed.

“nice guy but just cannot get any kind of readership, tries too hard for style points”

“ALL politics, No market. Outside the scope of iBC, terrible”

“terrible, makes a mockery of financial blogging”

“funny commenter on main iBC blogs but not much of a blogger in his own right, insufficiently focused writing, scatterbrained, cannot even capitalize a title”

“lets his blog go stale, decent if he could be consistent but looks to have thrown in the towel“

Mind you, this is just a small portion of the report. When I said “we are watching you,” I was not jesting.

Effective rather immediately (or tomorrow), the iBC cognoscenti, equity partners of the site, will take back what is rightfully theirs, by law. The front page of the site will be reserved for the gentlemen of iBC (crowd filled with plebs bursts into uproar, angry over new law). The news and blogger network will be relegated to their own respective pages and not the cellars, like the board recommended. I fight for you even to this day!

It’s important to remember, more than anything else: I am the Blog Father, ordained in the fires of the market, raised and bled in the vagrancy of Brooklyn, NY. The message is clear: mediocrity will no longer be tolerated at iBankCoin (angry board members stand up and applaud, shouting “here, here” while stomping canes into the ground). I am taking this site old school, real old, when the primary focus was about making money, not giving a fuck about traffic stats or keeping up with the IT homosexuals from San Fransicko.

With this stick, I offer you a singular carrot. As the blogger network gets superannuated to its own page, away from the iBC board, I am going to pluck one of you out, to become a staff writer, given “tabbed blogger” status, and possibly invited to an annual dinner one day. There are several of you who exhibit rare talent and should be given a bigger stage. My advice to you all is to deport yourself with a dignified air and bring your A game when pen goes to pad on iBC, with respect to grammar, punctuation and most certainly accuracy of market calls.

In an effort to avoid meltdown, they are now flooding the reactor at Fukushima with sea water. Although officials are downplaying the seriousness of the recent events at Fukushima, they have ordered an evacuation of all people within a 12 mile radius.

In addition to sea water, the people at Tokyo Electron are adding boric acid to the concoction, in order to disrupt the nuclear chain reaction.

NOTE: Over 200,000 people have been ordered to evacuate. Despite the plethora of reports that predict some sort of an apocalypse, Japanese officials insist they have things under control.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said they were venting out air, which contained radiation, but very low levels.UPDATE: Japanese officials are streaming a conference right now.

The Kyodo newswire is very slow to respond, due to the overwhelming amount of traffic they are receiving. However, from what I can gather, it looks like the situation at Fukushima Daiichi power plant’s Unit 1 is deteriorating. It’s being reported that part of the core may be “melting down.” I loathe people who ring alarms for the sake of garnering attention. However, logic dictates the Japanese officials would not be making statements like this, unless they felt a melt-down was a real possibility.

In the event of a meltdown, the affected area would be at least 5 kilometers.

Due to the quake, the power outage caused a domino effect that disabled the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. As a result, it’s being reported that radiation levels around the plant are 8x normal, suggesting some sort of dangerous leak has occurred. Evacuations are underway.

Six of Japan’s refineries, representing 31% of output, have ceased operations, due to the quake. Fires have been raging in the Cosmo Oil and JX Nippon Oil & Energy refineries. Japan has a total of 28 refineries and is the third largest consumer of crude in the world.

As of now, the following refineries have been shut down:

JX Nippon Oil & Energy
Sendai
Negishi
Kashima Oil
Kawasaki
Chiba

As a result, refinery stocks in the U.S. surged ahead today, led by gains in CVI, ALJ, TSO, WNR and FTO

Hurry up, run out and get one. If you do not have money to buy one, no problemo: just put that fucker on your credit card. It’s worth noting, “The Fly” will be buying another one today, as Mrs. Fly thinks the white version looks “awesome and amazing.”

Fri Mar 11, 2011 10:11am ESTComments Off on U.S. Refiners Surge As Japanese Refineries Go Offline391

On the news that Japan was forced to shut down oil refineries, due to the earthquake/tsunami disaster, shares of U.S. based refiners are surging, led by gains in ALJ (9%), WNR (5.5), VLO (5%) and TSO (5%). Speculation suggests that Japan will need to fulfill demand somehow and may need to import vast amounts of refined crude, until their refiners are back online.

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